In case you haven’t heard, we had the incredible opportunity of designing Ayesha Curry’s Homemade Pop-Up Shop in Oakland’s Jack London Square! Ayesha recently relaunched her Homemade brand, and the pop-up shop was a way for her fans to experience her brand and products in real-life. We had a blast creating a retail space that embodied her vision!

You can visit the store throughout the month of February at 423 Water St, but in case you can’t make it in-person, here’s some before and after photos to show you what we accomplished in TWO WEEKS start to finish. Big thanks to partner Cost Plus World Market who provided all of the furnishings!

BEFORE: Sad white walls

AFTER: Never underestimate the power of paint to transform!

BEFORE: Blue walls left over from the previous tenant

AFTER: Beautifully styled shelving and tabletops to show-off the wares

BEFORE: Depressing ceiling tiles

AFTER: No one’s looking at the ceiling tiles when there’s a bedroom scene this beautiful

What would you do when confronted with a nondescript white box of a condo? For our MIssion Bay Penthouse project, we transformed said condo with bold color and pattern! It’s amazing how wallpaper and paint can completely change a space and imbue personality. Read on for a few dramatic before and afters and make sure to check out the link at the bottom for all the photos from this project!

BEFORE: The living room

AFTER: We kept the walls white in the living room due to the plentiful sunlight, and brought in color through the furnishings.

The only walls kept white in the condo were in the living room and kitchen! The dark entry is painted in burgundy and transitions into this bright living space filled with natural sunlight. The colorful theme is found in the furnishings instead.

BEFORE: the master bedroom

AFTER: Blues and grays create a calm and peaceful retreat in the master bedroom.

The master bedroom is a peaceful retreat with its blue and gray color theme, and subtle yet dramatic hand-painted wallpaper. We love how the painted and wallpapered walls make the room feel bigger than before when the room had white walls.

BEFORE: The guest bedroom

AFTER: We created a moody guest bedroom with Farrow & Ball Hague Blue paint and a patterned wallpaper.

Our client’s favorite room is possibly this moody guest bedroom with elephant motif wallpaper. The contrast of the blue and yellow makes the furnishings pop, and this is a great example of how dark colors don’t make rooms feel depressing or small!

It's time for everyone's favorite: Before + After! Our Pacific Heights Vintage Modern project was truly transformative. The condo hadn't been updated in years and needed some major upgrades for the paint, laminate flooring, and outdated light fixtures. We also turned this bachelor pad into a proper home for two.

Let's start with the main living and dining area. What a difference fresh paint and custom hardwood floors can make! Not to mention all that new lighting and furniture...

BEFORE: The living and dining area

AFTER: The dining area

AFTER: The living area

Now moving onto the adjacent kitchen. Previously there was a partial wall separating the kitchen from the living and dining areas. To create the open floor plan, our team came up with a creative way to remove the wall without affecting plumbing. A new concrete bar countertop was added after the wall was removed.

BEFORE: View of the kitchen from the living area

AFTER: The kitchen

Lastly, we have the master bedroom where we rearranged the furniture layout to create a cozy lounge area.

A building’s architecture plays a large role in interior design. Even if you’re creating an open floor plan, the basic bones of your space (and of the others on your street) are characteristic of the era in which they were built.

What does this mean for you?

It means your space has an existing narrative! If we ignore that narrative while using interior design to tell your story, the two may sit at odds with each other and look incongruous. It’s our job to find harmony between the two and to create a cohesive story that feels uniquely yours.

To show you what we mean, we designed this high concept guest bedroom that fuses Mediterranean-inspired architecture with our signature modernist style.

Because our goal was to blend old with new, push color boundaries, and create something wholly unique, we didn’t recreate a typical Mediterranean villa.

Instead, we let the architecture inspire a vibrant color palette. Hues of yellow and red create a warm and hospitable welcome, while robin’s egg blue bedding gives a refreshing nod to the sea.

In general, art is a great way to tie a room together, especially when you’re marrying genres. These contemporary pieces by Robert Szot (left) and Paul Wackers (right) echo the room’s warm and colorful palette and create further harmony between lines and curves.

Lastly, plants are the final piece in evoking an airy Mediterranean retreat and just might inspire this house guest to throw open the windows!

In the end, this room tells a specific story for a specific guest. It’s the perfect example of not fighting or ignoring your home or building’s architecture, but having the courage to weave nuances of it into the interior design.

Let multiple influences create your narrative, and you might be surprised by the richness of the results.

What styles would you want to mix together? Tell us in the comments below!

We recently had the pleasure of helping create a home for Jenny and Thomas, a newlywed Taiwanese-American and French couple who had differing styles in mind for their Brooklyn apartment. After most recently living in San Francisco, they moved to New York City to be closer to Thomas’ family in Paris. This globe-trotting couple met while in graduate school in Barcelona, then lived apart for some time during which Jenny was in San Francisco and Thomas was in Munich.

The primary challenge was reconciling the couple's differences when it came to decorating; Thomas' style is modern, while Jenny's style is cottage vintage. Additionally, the apartment lacks direct sunlight in the living and dining rooms. Vibrant color with a fresh take on mid-century modern perfectly combined the couple's differing styles and brightened up the darker spaces. A combination of new and vintage furniture/decor, and original artwork created a home that is uniquely Jenny and Thomas'.

"What I found helpful is how you got us to look at the spaces holistically so that it was less about what pieces we liked as individuals but more about how they fit into the larger picture of our home" - Jenny